Eftekari

The gig: As general manager of the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, Mehdi Eftekari is in charge of one of the region's elite hotels. The Four Seasons on Doheny Drive serves business and leisure travelers with money to spend but is best known as a magnet for show-biz people working in movies, television and music. The hotel also is home to about half of all movie industry press junkets, where reporters fly in from all over the country to interview the stars of a new release and enjoy a day or two of luxury.

The gig: As general manager of the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, Mehdi Eftekari is in charge of one of the region's elite hotels. The Four Seasons on Doheny Drive serves business and leisure travelers with money to spend but is best known as a magnet for show-biz people working in movies, television and music. The hotel also is home to about half of all movie industry press junkets, where reporters fly in from all over the country to interview the stars of a new release and enjoy a day or two of luxury.

For the first time in its 10-year history, the annual Art of Dining benefit looks more like a corporate advertisement than a convocation of superchefs. Every year, wunderchef Joachim Splichal of Patina in Los Angeles has gathered a dazzling lineup of chefs from top restaurants around the country for the event. Sunday at the Four Seasons Hotel here, Splichal and his handpicked crew will have been replaced by chefs chosen only from Four Seasons hotels.

Tourism accounted for more than $21 million in revenue during the last fiscal year, the most ever for Newport Beach, said Rosalind Williams of the Newport Beach Conference and Visitors Bureau. Seventy percent of tax dollars from merchandise sold and 60% of sales tax from restaurants came from the pocketbooks of tourists in the fiscal year that ended July 1, she said. The money is earmarked for the city's general fund. "We were able to achieve this with a relatively small marketing budget of $1.

The upscale Four Seasons Hotel on Wednesday dropped a noise lawsuit against its hip neighbor, Twin Palms restaurant, ending an unusual public feud between two of the city's ritziest businesses. Since the lawsuit was filed in April, the open-air restaurant has taken several steps to muffle the music from its late-night bands, Four Seasons general manager Mehdi Eftekari said.

Hotels in Los Angeles County enjoyed record occupancy rates in July thanks to surging numbers of foreign and U.S. tourists, as well as growing convention and conference visitors. The rate of occupied rooms in the county in July hit 83.9%, the highest for any month in the 25 years that the data has been collected, according to the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board. The record rate marks the seventh straight month of year-over-year increases and represents the latest indication that tourism - one of the region's biggest industries - is rebounding from the economic recession of recent years.

On an upper floor of the Four Seasons on the edge of Beverly Hills, guests stepping off the elevator see a typical high-end hotel hallway: thick carpeting, subdued lighting, numbered rooms. But visitors who open a certain door find themselves in a high-tech studio that resembles a cozy living room from the 1960s or '70s, a place to settle in for a martini or two with friends. Thousands of dollars' worth of recording and editing equipment are there too, but are hard to notice at a glance.

It's the last thing you'd expect at tony Newport Coast: a public country club. But that's the name of the game at the luxurious Pelican Hill Golf Club, where anyone can dine, dance or drink in a view of the Pacific. Since opening in September, the $9-million facility--perched above two 18-hole golf courses built for $68 million--has become Orange County's hottest new venue for social events.

Family Restaurants Inc. has named Roger K. Chamness as president of its Chi-Chi's division and William D. Burt as president of its El Torito operations. Chamness, a 15-year restaurant industry veteran, most recently served as executive vice president of finance and administration at Family Restaurants. Chamness succeeds Jack McGregor, an executive who joined the company temporarily in late 1995 to help with an ongoing reorganization.

Shamed by images of wealthy corporateers cavorting at the expense of ordinary people, U.S. companies canceled an estimated $1 billion worth of conferences in the first two months of this year and trimmed back on others. Hoteliers are calling it "the AIG effect," after the insurance company that took a public drubbing for spending freely on corporate perks despite its financial turmoil.